In the development of a product for mass production, when the product in the design stage passes through various types of testing and enters the mass production system, the drawings and materials related to the product are fixed as a work product (WP) in relation to the product under mass production, that is to say, in relation to the current product. A base line is set for the fixed WP, and when revising a WP that has a set base line, management is performed in relation to the details of any change, the reason for the change, the party approving the change, and the relevant dates for the change, and the like.
Furthermore, when some kind of change in the specification of a product under mass production is required consequent to, for example, a recall and the WP is revised, whether other components are affected by the change of the specification is investigated. Therefore, it is important to maintain information that identifies other WPs that are associated with a given WP in a system.
Related prior art includes proposals to improve the reliability of a specification and improve production characteristics in the production operations for a specification for new software using previously prepared software specifications (for example, refer to Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. H8-147152). Furthermore, there is a technique of supporting the development of request description documents describing the software requests, the design model prepared on the basis of the requests description documents, and the deliverables which are the program codes prepared from the design model (for example, refer to Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2007-122135).
However, the prior art techniques have a problem in that, when a new WP is prepared, the operation load is increased in relation to operations for association of WPs since the association of the new WP to another WP that is associated with the new WP has been performed manually.